Look around, at your mates, your father, brother, or son. You see them every day, you think you know what’s going through they’re head. But do you?
My story
Hello, my name is Jakob Skinner. My Life was pretty normal and uneventful right up until high school. Before this time, I was getting by in school and spending time with my friends, nothing out of the ordinary. As far as I or anyone else knew both I, and those close to me were healthy, happy and living good lives.
As I grew up and matured, I began to slowly realise the realities of the world we live in. The small things in the background that didn’t matter to me before and were seemingly insignificant began to affect me. I started to notice them and a lot of them, even some of the things I grew up with began to affect me negatively.
My parents had split, and I had just transitioned into high school, I was learning how to deal with a new environment both at school and home. I had no safe space and I had no idea where I could go to get help. My mind was in turmoil, my world had been turned upside down and I needed help. Help that was far too hard to access, help that should have been in easy reach.
The Stats
There are many programs designed to help young people and women but unfortunately there are very few dedicated specifically to men.
On average, men commit suicide 3 times as much as women. Men are supposed to be strong and fearless, so many boys grow up being told not to feel and that if they show that they do, they’re weak. It’s unescapable, at all ages from birth to death men are practically told “Be strong, don’t show emotion.” And if you fail to fill both of those criteria you’re seen as not only a failure but also a weakling.
The real issue
This is so engrained into young men, even I currently having issues with asking for help and the whole purpose of this is to teach men, to teach us that it’s okay to need help. One of my teachers ended up pulling me up on how I was acting and that I clearly needed help. I had done my best to hide it, but I needed the help and if I hadn’t been pulled up on it, I probably never would have said anything. Most of us don’t get noticed, we spend so much time worried about who would care and what they would say, that we’re all so afraid to ask for help simply because we don’t want to seem weak. I like to think that I’m one of the lucky ones. That the only reason I got help was because I won some sort of coin toss. The truth is that I got help because I knew the signs of a troubled mind and I knew roughly where to look, I’m one of the few though. Unfortunately, not many people know where to look.
How we aim to help
The main thing we aim to do with this project is to teach men that it’s okay to ask for help. To teach everyone that men can and should use self-care, and mental health services. We aim to sell soap and eventually a wide range of self-care products to all Men. We donate a portion of our profits to pre-established charities that predominantly help men. We would very much like to team up with veteran based services like Mates for Mates who help veterans adjust to civilian life and even support current service men and women in dealing with things like P.T.S.D and other disorders. We understand that not all veterans are men but we feel that veterans go through similar things to men when it comes to mental health so it's important to help them as much as we can. Mens Line Australia is another project that we would very much like to team up with. Mens Line Australia is an Australian based charity that operates 24/7 call centres that are staffed with professional counsellors for when things get tough.
What you can do
- You could donate to our cause or one like it
- Go and donate directly to a charity
- Tell all the men in your lives that it’s okay to talk about how they feel, encourage it and make it known that you’re there for them. This is the most important thing on this list.